it's been 18 years since jokovic has not reached the fourth round of the US Open it's been 22 years since a member of The Big Three has not won a Grand Slam Tournament this is an insane amount of time if you think about it and a lot of people are speculating that this is it for Novak that he's done burnt out he has nothing else to play for I'm just going by what Novak is saying in his interviews and it appears that Novak doesn't look at it that way he enjoys the competition he enjoys tennis and he want want to keep going as long as he possibly can but it is clear that if you look at the year 2024 this has been one of the worst years for Novak despite him winning Olympic gold in fact Novak currently is seventh in the race to qualify for the year end championships in toine and there's a lot of other players like deau and demitro that if they do well maybe at the US Open or in some of these other tournaments that they're going to overpass Novak and there's a likelihood that nov might not qualify for that tournament he scheduled to play two more tournaments till the end of the year Shanghai and Paris and he's going to have to play well in those tournaments to qualify so this has not been a good year for Novak and before I give you my analysis of joko's current level and his lost to paperin in the third round let's first give credit where credit is due and papin is playing amazing right now not a fluke that he won Montreal this guy is an amazing player and I thought that he played a tactically sound match against Novak see in the past Novak sometimes struggled against players who gave him no Pace I'm sure you remember Jill Simone who played some really tight matches with Novak who would give Novak basically nothing to work with so I thought it was a very good tactic for paperin to slice a lot of backhands and in my mind I'm thinking you know paperin is slicing these backends Novak is going to dominate those Baseline rallies but Novak didn't he did take some of those slices with his forehand and open up the court but when papin sliced to Novak's backand Novak was just rolling the ball back in play so I thought that that was an excellent tactic from poing slicing to Novak not giving him a lot of pace so let's break down the match in the first set Novak actually had some looks to get a break he had L 40 up 3-2 and then he had more break points up 43 so Novak actually had a good look to win that first set but then weirdly Novak lost his serve to love at four all and papin served out the set and once Novak lost his set we saw some of the same troubles that Novak has had all year where he didn't seem to be mentally in this set he was rushing between points he was making a tremendous amount of double faults his first serf percentage was low throughout the match he was at 54% and he served a total of 14 double Falls but to me that second set cost Novak dear because he just wasn't in the match mentally speaking when I see Novak rushing between points not taking any time I get worried and I've never seen Novak play well when he does that so he loses that second set and I thought that possibly Novak could go out in straights but Novak did try hard in that third set played some really good tennis and ended up winning it 6'2 the fourth set was such a clutch performance from papin because Novak now was in the match and he was playing a lot better and there were two key games in that fourth set at one poer in the match there was that long game at two all in the fourth where Novak was serving it went Deuce a bunch of times and it was possibly the best point of the entire match a long extended rally where paperin pulled the trigger on the forehand from behind the Baseline and hit an inside out winner and then made an extended grunt got the break but to me where paperin won the match was in that next game because Novak Joko is the master of the rebound breaks so when papin was serving at 3-2 found himself down 1540 but he ended up holding that game and went up 4-2 those two games to me were the two most important games for the match and that's how papin got the victory I will also say that when it came to serving out sets and especially serving out the match paperin was clutch he didn't show any signs of nerves and it was a very impressive performance and to me the most impressive thing about this Victory were paperin tactics a lot of play players tried to go through Novak and they hit hard and Novak loves Pace he's maybe the greatest counter puncher in the history of the game but papy not only sliced a lot of back hands he also mixed up his forehand I thought he would hit some higher spinny forehands and he would wait for his chances to pull the trigger beautiful example of that was that break point in the fourth set at two all where papin was spinning a lot of deep forehand and then eventually when he felt like he had a look pulled the trigger on the forehand hit a blistering winner inside out so tactically this was an excellent match from papin now let's talk about Novak so everybody's saying that both alaras and Novak lost because of the Olympics and there's an interesting post on Twitter where they show the medalists at the Olympics which were jich alaras and musetti who are all out of the US Open and they showed the Medalist for the women which were jien vage and fantech and they're all still in the US Open so does that mean that the women are tougher than the men first of all you have to judge each player individually it's hard to draw these conclusions and if you think about it the schedule was so jam packed this year you had Wimbledon Olympics and US Open in a very short time span and obviously it's a lot more difficult to play best of five at a grand slam compared to best of three at a grand slam so you can't really make that comparison but but more specifically that final between akaras and jokovic I do think that at the emotional level maybe not necessar that the physical even though those two can surely be connected that match took a lot out of both guys and they needed more time to decompress from that match the change over to the hardcour was simply too fast so I do think that this affected both alaras and jokovic alarz said that this match did not have an effect on him and jokovic did say that he just didn't have enough time to prepare for this tournament and it's one of the reasons why he said this was one of the worst matches that he's ever played in fact he said that this was one of the worst tournaments that he's ever played and he's lucky to have made the third round so I do think that that pressure cooker of a situation at the Olympics had a huge impact but I also think that Montreal being the week after the Olympics is absolutely brutal and it is clear that the players who decided to skip the Olympics have a huge advantage over the players that went deep into Olympics and that could explain why the three men's medalist already out of the tournament so what's next for Novak well I do think that rankings are important and he doesn't want to find himself in a situation like Nadal and I'm not saying that this will happen because Nadal is not even in the top 100 and he's getting the absolute most brutal draws so I do believe that Joko has to continue to play a fairly packed schedule to keep his ranking high and how will he perform well it's impossible to predict personally I'm happy that Novak is still playing the tour is better off with Novak in it there's a lot of attention and excitement around Novak whether it's the haters or the fans so I'm very curious to see how Noak will play until the end of the year whether he will make the year end championships and let's see what happens